When I first started in the game, (somewhere after TBC went live) Guilds had more defined, more focused atmospheres.
If you joined a Raiding guild, you knew what that meant.
Now-- You join a guild and you have no idea at what they are trying to do or foster in the guild.
Are they PvP?
Are they RP?
Are they what???
Instead, we’re getting tons and tons of guilds that say, “Hey! We do everything!”
And then they don’t. What you end up being is another number that adds to the guild roster so it appears a guild has tons of players, doing tons of activities.
Meanwhile, there’s nothing in those guilds that is being organized.
This doesn’t help create social gatherings. It impedes it.
How does eliminating raiding for the majority casual players improve community? I would say group finder for heroic+ and normal difficulty is far more problematic.
Back in the day (oh god I feel old saying this) if you wanted to do raiding content, you’d have to find a guild and actually talk to people and then join a raid team so you could do so. Nowadays you can just click a button, wait until the queue pops, and experience all content.
i really don’t understand the anti-LFR rants. if you don’t like it, don’t do it, don’t think about it, and don’t worry about it.
i don’t like mythic+. most of the people that enjoy that type of content are a little too intense for my likes, and i want nothing to do with the “go go go” mentality. i don’t lose sleep over it. we all don’t have to like the same content. we also don’t have to criticize and condemn the content we choose not to do. enjoy what you do, and what you earn from those endeavors, and stop worrying about what other get or do.
That isn’t socializing or community, that is gatekeeping and being held hostage to participate in game content.
–Now you are free to choose who you want to spend your time with.–
This game is about high keys, randos with high IO scores and group finder groups. What about that particular focus screams community to you? When you decimate the importance of the various levels of raiding by throwing meaningful progression primarily into mythic plus dungeons, guilds and community are rendered irrelevant.
There are still plenty of people looking to form raid groups and do normal, heroic and mythic raiding which all require you to look for pre-made group or join a guild. LFR just gives people more options if they wouldn’t have gone out of their way to find a group to begin with, or if they just want an additional thing to do. If you don’t like it, then just ignore it.
Community focused things I would like them to improve on though are guilds and their functionality. Things like better/updated guild perks, guild halls or short and long-term goals guilds can work toward that have a meaningful impact on their members, aside from just raid/M+ progression or PvP rating.
Because then guilds that remain can make bank by charging players for “tourist” runs. “No gear for you filthy casual. Your here to watch. So shut up, watch the content and be quiet.” Does that sound rude? Well guess what? That was Classic’s underside.
That’s the ugly reality the anti-LFR crowd doesn’t want to discuss. I remember guilds charging 1000+ gold for a single Naxx in Vanilla. That’s really what they want. That and a need to control players.
Because lets face it if they want to make a raiding guild and seek for a higher difficulty than normal, the game and the same tools that existed even in Classic are right there, waiting for them. It’s not about teamwork or community. Hell on Silver Hand server, ask about the A.Q. Scepter debacle that almost screwed the “community” out of their Scarab Lords. It’s about control.
if i make a group to do a raid that doesn’t mean i have to be friends with you. it’s just a means to an end. so removing lfr isn’t this cure all you think it is.
Ok, let’s look back at some PvP changes over the years. Long ago, tanks didn’t do much damage but could survive massive amounts of damage. DPS were very squishy and had to use CC on quest mobs. And questing as a healer was masochistic. Healers could also easily run out of mana, as could DPS in long fights. People in cloth didn’t like that they took more melee damage than people in plate, so the value of armor was changed so there wasn’t a massive difference between a cloth robe and thick plates of steel. Some people didn’t like that they didn’t have a self heal, so everybody but mages got a self heal. There was also a “tank shortage”, but it was actually just that tanks didn’t like taking all the abuse in pugs, so Blizzard changed the mechanics so that tanks did more damage, comparable to actual DPS, to entice more DPS to reroll tanks. So now we’ve got DPS that can tank their own mobs, and tanks that do almost as much damage as the DPS.
So how does this affect community? Who needs a group when you can solo “group quests”? Even on the Timeless Isle we had people complaining that they wanted to solo the bosses in the pit instead of people tagging them for loot. In an effort to balance PvP, they made everyone the same. And when everyone’s the same, nobody worries too much about class roles and tactics. Mythic raids might require organization, but ordinary game play is just a chaotic mob trying to tap everything they can and spam damage abilities.
CCing a mob actually guarantees that it’ll be the first mob attacked. That’s probably due to some people being deeply insecure and wanting to feel power over someone who’s helpless, which is really messed up psychologically, but it’s a common behavior in children these days. Back in Vanilla and BC, unless you had a raid geared tank in a regular 5 man instance, which is the typical argument made by people trying to justify being incompetent, mobs had to be CC’d or they’d wreck the tank.
People have to NEED each other to build that sense of community. If everybody assumes they could solo the whole instance, or pull every mob in the quest area and AoE them down, they don’t need anybody. It’s just an angry mob trying to beat each other on the DPS meters.
Honestly, that was a quote from a blue on old forums.
And it was a reply to a serious question. And it was the only blue reply to that question. They ain’t looking out for us so any time people saying they is, i just laugh. Cause y’all being redonk.
First off, you don’t need to be friends with everyone to have a community. Second off, it would go a very long way to fixing that problem if you were all in the same community/shard/server so you could play together anytime.
Problems with the game I can work with, those take time to resolve, programmers have to write fixes, etc. Management can be slow, but often things work out over time. Nerfs and gear resets I’ve learned to live with, same for their tunnelvisioning raisd and pvp. Class nerfs, grinds, restrictions, etc… all of that I can handle.
Copypasta though, is only ever a sign that they aren’t putting in actual time or effort.
I would actually resub if they would put an emphasis on guilds again. And I ain’t talkin bout guild levels! I’m talking about guild centric activities and events that actually are fun, and have a form a progression over a period of time.
That is 100% socializing and forcing you to be part of a community.
“gatekeeping” “being held hostage” lol, if you don’t want to be forced to play and communicate with others in order to do endgame content, don’t play an MMO. Go play Skyrim.
You seem to mistakenly believe I haven’t done end game content. I have and I did not agree with guilds being gatekeepers then or now.
You also mistakenly believe you can ‘force’ anyone to do anything --in a game that they pay for.
Humans don’t work that way.